ART HISTORY RESIDENCY 2025-2026

The Association for Art History and The Ampersand Foundation are delighted to announce that Maeve O’Donnell (Teaching Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art) has been awarded the 2025-26 Art History Residency.

The residency offers a researcher the opportunity for concentrated time to further their work at Wigwell Lodge in the Derbyshire countryside. It will run from October 2025 to January 2026.

During the residency, Maeve O’Donnell, will focus on a little-studied rock crystal lamp from medieval Seville that passed through the hands of multiple owners between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Originally a large Byzantine bowl, the object was later transformed through the addition of a bronze mount bearing a poetic inscription some four centuries later.

The project seeks to move beyond narratives that have previously shaped interpretations of the object, instead tracing its reception and display within Seville’s multi-confessional medieval contexts. Through close analysis of its form, inscription, and distinctive wave-like design, the research will explore how themes of divine light were expressed across different cultural traditions, offering new insight into the shifting identities of the object’s medieval owners.

Gregory Perry, CEO of the Association for Art History, commented:
“We so pleased to be supporting Maeve O’Donnell’s research on this project and we look forward to its contribution to the scholarship on cultural exchange, belief and identity in the medieval world. We are very grateful to The Ampersand Foundation for their continued support in enabling sustained art historical research.”

On completion of the residency, Maeve O’Donnell will be invited to deliver a talk on her research at the Association’s Art History Festival.